Nurses, whether they’re licensed practical nurses (LPNs), registered nurses (RNs), and even nurse practitioners (NPs) all have skills and abilities that are essential to their jobs. Nursing (and all other professions) requires both soft skills and hard skills. Soft skills are skills that everyone in the majority of career fields should possess and are more like personal qualities. Hard skills are skills that are specific to a specific industry and are also necessary to have.
When considering your nursing career, it’s crucial to recognize the value of both soft and hard skills. Additionally, explore the diverse range of prn travel nursing job opportunities available, as these assignments require a blend of these skills, combining your clinical expertise with adaptability, communication, and problem-solving abilities to excel in various healthcare settings.
Here are six skills that all nurses need to have to perform their job effectively.
#1: Adaptability
Healthcare is one of the most unpredictable work environments, and all workers must be able to adapt to each new situation in order to provide the best results. Nurses— especially those who work in hospitals— work long hours and don’t have set schedules, so these adaptability skills are important to have:
Resilience
Persistence
Observation
Motivation
Creativity
Still, nurses can and do experience burnout, as highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, burnout was still high among many nurses and other healthcare professionals. In addition to adaptability skills, it’s important for all healthcare workers to remember that their mental health is just as important. A healthcare organization must be proactive in ensuring that the right team is in place to meet these challenges. This may include hiring more doctors or expanding other medical staff roles to address patient needs more effectively. Your staffing levels should be adequate and flexible in a dynamic healthcare setting in order to better support your team and improve patient outcomes.
#2: Communication
Communication is a skill needed in virtually every career field. In nursing, nurses interact with not only their patients, but also with other nurses, doctors, and hospital staff. There are several components to communication, such as:
Written communication
Verbal communication
Tone and clarity
Responsiveness
Feedback
Confidence and respect
Body language
Active listening
Good communication also requires good social skills, meaning that you interact with others in a positive and personable way. This includes being dependable, cooperative, patient, and flexible. All of these traits also allow you to work effectively with a team.
#3: Empathy
Being empathetic means that you’re able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and gain a better understanding of their experiences. Nurses work with a variety of people, all of who have experiences unique to them— with or without serious physical or mental health issues. Skills related to empathy include:
Validation
Understanding
Responsibility
Listening
Compassion
Empathy also extends to patients’ families, as they can also be overcome with anxiety or grief. Building rapport with patients and their families helps them build trust and allows them to feel more comfortable.
#4: Professionalism
Professionalism is necessary for every career field, and it goes beyond looking neat and clean at work. Nurses must have a good sense of right and wrong to properly care for patients, as well as other skills related to professionalism. These other skills include:
Responsibility
Positive attitude
Integrity and responsibility
Discipline
Collaboration
It also includes the ability to properly manage time and all of the other skills listed above.
#5: Time Management
Time management is another skill that is essential to every career field. Most jobs and even schools require tasks to be done within a specific time frame, so good time management skills are necessary to make this happen. Examples of time management skills include:
Prioritization
Organization
Goal-setting and planning
Ethics
Delegation
Communication
This can be a difficult skill to learn and maintain, as there are many distractions all around us each day. Establishing a set routine and blocking out these distractions are two major keys to being successful in time management.
#6: Urgent/Emergency, Specialty, and Basic Care
Working in healthcare, the main objective is to provide care to patients, and there are different levels of care. Everyone needs basic care, which includes things like assessing patients and monitoring vital signs, and then those in need will also require urgent care (medical conditions that need attention) emergency care (serious medical conditions that require immediate attention), and specialty care (for specific types of conditions). Different areas of care include:
Surgical care
Rehabilitation
Pediatric and adolescent care
Neonatal and prenatal care
Intensive care
Hospice care
Geriatric care
Cardiac care
Nurses also need basic first aid skills, including CPR. These certifications are valid for two years, meaning they must be renewed that often. You can receive training for CPR and first aid online or in person. All of these are considered to be hard skills because they relate directly to the profession.
Hard skills are typically a part of a continuous education in certain job industries, especially in healthcare, and soft skills can also be a continuous learning experience. Adaptability, communication, empathy, professionalism, and time management are all skills that may come naturally to some but can also be learned by others.
Hi there! I am Emily Evert, the owner of Emily Reviews. I am 28 and live in a small town in Michigan with my boyfriend Ryan and our two pugs. I have a large family and I adore my nieces and nephews. I love reading memoirs, and learning about child development and psychology. I love watching The Game of Thrones, Teen Mom, Sister Wives and Veep. I like listening to Jason Isbell, John Prine, and other alt-country or Americana music. I created Emily Reviews as a creative outlet to share my life and the products that I love with others.
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